Ian. Smethurst - Eye of the Dracos

“Full power to the ship’s main engines, head for the atmosphere.” Kallos said, as he took the centre seat once used by the late commander Fontaine.

After staring puzzlingly at the instruments for a few seconds, Taneth finally came across a shiny metallic ‘T’ shaped handle, and pushed it all the way forward.

This ignited the Eisenhower’s twin inter-system boosters with a giant roar, the ship began to gradually lurch forward under the thrust of the two gigantic turbines, gaining speed all the time.

The Liberty, still connected, was being dragged along forcefully by the much larger craft, the small warship started lurching and rocking violently as it was pulled along, crewmen were thrown to the ground everywhere, Kinraid barely managed to hold onto his seat.

“What in the name o’ god is goin’ on!” he shouted over the din of violent shaking, the scream of twisting metal, and the shattering of glass.

“It’s the Eisenhower!” Lieutenant Hicks shouted, the relief sensor officer aboard. “She’s fired up her main boosters! She’s heading straight for the planet!”

“What in the love o’ Mike for!”

“No idea, but we are being pulled along with her like a dog on a leash! The stress on the inter-connecting corridor is exceeding design limits! She’s going to tear off the ship any second, and if she does we’ll have explosive decompression across the whole deck!” Hicks shouted over the constant barrage of the ship’s violent jostling, several other naval officers were thrown forcefully from their chairs.

“Jettison the hatch! Break us free o’ the Eisenhower, and then contact that bloody ship, ask them what the devil do they tink they are doin?”

“Automated docking clamps are unresponsive, attempting to override.” Hicks said as he tied in the sensory station with the engineering sub-systems monitor of the ship.

“Alerts are blaring at me all over my screen! That section is close to buckling, it’ll give way any second!” Logan Jones said as he looked toward Hicks in panic.

“There, I’ve got it!” The lieutenant shouted in triumph as he managed to separate the badly damaged corridor from the Eisenhower, the Liberty floated free as the enormous vessel, five times its size, roared ahead past them.

The heavy cruiser’s hull began to heat up, turning a shade of bright orange as it neared the atmosphere.

“Full alert status; follow them!” Kinraid barked.

“Commander, our hull won’t stand another entry into the planets atmosphere, not with the damage we sustained fighting the Dracos ships.” Hicks said.

“Godamnit!” Kinraid fumed, but ultimately knew that Hicks was right, with the pounding they had taken, they would simply burn up trying. The graviton shields would not last for long.

“I’ve tried contacting them, there’s no response, and I’m showing a wave of escape pods jettisoned just prior to her firing her boosters.”

“What?” Kinraid asked, it was all beginning to make sense now, she’s been taken over, had to be.

“Lieutenant, what lifesigns are you showing over there?”

Hicks checked his instruments, “three Dracos lifesigns, that is all…” He gasped as the stark reality of what had happened hit home.

“Well if we can’t stop ‘em, we’ll make it bloody difficult! Ready fusion cannon, target their engines, fire when ready!” Kinraid said.

Logan zeroed in on the Eisenhower punching its way ever deeper into the planets atmosphere, its hull blazing orange, and slowly turning to white as heat continued to build up on its outer hull. Flames and super heated plasma trailed off it, making it difficult to get an exact fix. He pressed the button and unleashed the full fury of the Liberties largest and most powerful weapon system.

The incandescent electric blue beam of raw power shot from the elongated barrel of the weapon, slamming home with such force it tore apart one of the Eisenhower’s boosters, blasting it clean off the ship, a great black cloud of smoke and debris fragments billowed out from the impact, leaving a thick black contrail in its wake.

The force of the impact was so great that it caused the giant runaway cruiser to veer uncontrollably off-centre. The massive breach on its rear continued to stream out smoke, as the hull of the huge ship heated up irregularly, glowing red-hot as it continued to push deeper.

Kinraid could only watch the stresses of the ship’s hull grow to such an extreme, as it began to list wildly out of control towards the planet. Halfway along its surface it began to buckle, no longer able to resist the immense force subjected to it. It finally gave way; a panel tore open, then another, and another like paper, the ship was slowly tearing itself apart as it hurtled onwards in its suicidal descent.

Support struts, cross-beams, and its internal structural lattice work were all painfully visible as the rear half of the ship slowly tore itself away from the front half in a cloud of flame, billowing smoke, and debris. Small explosions flashed across its broken hull like the very fires of hell, swathes of hull fragments were thrown loose as the latter half of the ship gradually tore itself to pieces in a giant plume of flame and red-hot shrapnel, all streaking downward toward the planet surface.

Amazingly, the front half of the ship was still intact, and glided haphazardly toward the surface. Now through the upper atmosphere, it rushed headlong in its descent, fire blazed out of a myriad of rents and smoke poured from the torn aft section in a thick black trail across the sky. Tiny twisted metal fragments were constantly torn loose from the devastated structure, like a shower of metallic confetti, before the entire ship smashed headlong into the planet surface, with such incredible force that it threw up a great cloud of earth and dust over a thousand metres into the air, before settling into a crater almost a kilometre across. Small fires littered the basin where the remains of the devastated ship lay, the thick plume of smoke that heralded its arrival seemed to grow steadily wider, before it too began to disperse.

The torn hull fragments of the rear half of the ship rained down through the thick pall of methane clouds, like a plethora of dark streamers, before they too slammed into the ground themselves.

Kinraid simply watched awestruck, as did the entire bridge crew of the Liberty. For minutes afterwards debris continued to fall in little black and grey shoots to the ground, he had never seen anything quite like it, it was as if the planet had just been struck by a meteorite; and to all intents, it had.

Michael, Kathryn, Nikolai and the accompanying commandoes all witnessed the gigantic blast created by the crashing Eisenhower, in fact the shockwave from the impact had blown them all completely off their feet. They gradually stood and shook themselves off, looking upon the plume of smoke, earth and dust, rising steadily higher into the atmosphere, they could see the bright fiery streamers of falling debris, looking like a swarm of miniature shooting stars.

The three surviving Dracos however had lived through the colossal impact, in fact they had jumped clear of the wreckage several seconds before it had slammed into the ground, using their cat-like acrobatics to literally leap from torn outer hull fragment to torn outer hull fragment, eventually landing hard on the ground itself. The strength of their suits protected them from the worst of the landing, the shockwave of course flattened them all, though they had expected this and so kept their bodies as close to the ground as possible, so that the immense blast wave passed reasonably harmlessly over them.

Once they had returned to full consciousness several minutes later, they found that they could move easily enough, nothing was broken, and other than a few minor cuts and scrapes, were ready to resume the hunt; and that they did, with gusto as they ran the rest of the way straight toward the Dracos facility.